SPRUNG
“Don’t you know you change the patterns of my sleep?”
I have a confession to make.
I started watching a Bravo show. It’s just one, but I know; it’s a slippery slope. I’ll be careful.
I was flipping through the channels a few weeks ago and a familiar scene caught my eye: King Street in Charleston, SC.
I love King Street. It’s my favorite place to shoot ‘street photography’ in the south.
It’s colorful and charming, buzzing and alive; the heart of Charleston so to speak. World class dining, shopping and people-watching. And it’s unmistakable, so I flipped back immediately. What I saw - Bravo logo in the bottom corner - was really well done B-roll, for what appeared to be a Real Housewives-style show set in Charleston.
It was Southern Charm.
I ‘d heard about the show in the past but paid it no mind. It’s likely that I subconsciously categorized it as a time-waster with the rest of it’s Bravo peers [Editor’s note: I had a quick fling with Below Deck: Sailing Yacht a few years back but have since recovered and spent my time wisely, until now.] But since Charlie is so near-and-dear to my heart, and here it was in front of me, I gave the show a few minutes.
Six hours later it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m yelling at my TV that Austen’s a POS and Madison has been right this whole time.
Wait what the hell just happened!? I need to get to bed, like yesterday.
Whoa. Southern Charm got me.
The next day I had Charleston on my brain. Not like, Oh that place is nice I need to get back down there soon.
It was more like If I don’t leave my apartment right now and go reach for greatness in Chucktown my whole body might explode.
Pictures straight, the house is crooked. I promise.
Whatever it was: the accents, the characters, the B-roll footage - which was, again, seriously excellent - I just needed to get back down there. It had been since November, three months or so, and that’s just too long. The heart desires what it desires, and mine needed to walk a half-marathon around the peninsula to look for an iconic photo. The 2026 Charleston magazine contest will be here before you know it, and I had nothing in the hopper yet.
Speaking of, I entered a photo of this same cat into that contest last year. I cannot believe I found him again. It’s not a small place.
So for the next few days I went to bed early, stocking up on sleep so that I could bust out of town before sunrise on Sunday, my one day off of the week. The plan, as always, was to get down there as early as possible and stay until sundown. As I’ve stated many times, golden hour in Charleston is my favorite time and place to shoot. That was ten-ish hours from my planned arrival, so I had my work cut out for me.
When the weekend arrived I tried to run the play as it was drawn up, but I was so well rested by Saturday night and wired for Sunday that I couldn’t get to sleep early. Five or six episodes of Southern Charm later, I finally shut it down.
The next morning my alarm came early - too early. I couldn’t get whipped up the way I was the week prior. I crawled out to the car at 9-something and made it King Street exactly two hours later. [Editor’s note: it is often times two hours *to the minute* from my front door to my parking spot downtown. Right, left, right, left. Four turns total and three of them are getting out of my neighborhood.]
I didn’t get in the groove right away, or as it turns out, at all. I was rusty. I didn’t realize until I got home later that it was the first time I had shot since JANUARY. I took an entire month off from picking up the camera, and it showed.
I got eight or nine miles in on foot before I saw the weather radar. That’s a beautiful bonus of getting ‘locked-in’ to shoot the day away down there - I stay off my phone. So for a fleeting few hours, there is no war, no scandal, no treason. It’s just me, my camera and my two feet. Ignorance really is bliss.
Unfortunately the radar showed storms threatening to call the day off early. They were rolling in quick and it was not likely that there would not be a golden hour at all. Besides that, Charleston is at such a low elevation that if someone accidentally kicks over a water bottle there’s a flood alert downtown.
For example.
So, I went home early, after only six hours or so, with only ONE shot that I really liked. It was new addition to my series of Charlestonian’s dressed like their surroundings. I’d throw it in piggy bank but had nothing to show for otherwise.
I had a fine day, don’t get me wrong. I got some exercise (and practice) in a place I enjoy… but I couldn’t help but feel unfulfilled.
Before I even made it home, I was already determined to return for vengeance the following Sunday.
I spent the whole week with Charleston on my brain. At night I continued to binge Southern Charm, in the morning I watched their local news. I saw one morning that because of an accident on one of the only two bridges that connect to the peninsula, travel time was estimated at 156 minutes to get across town. I’m 120 minutes away here in Myrtle Beach. I could beat someone that lives there downtown, I thought with a smirk. My daily work commute here in Myrtle is three blocks and has been for the better part of a decade. I’ve spent less time driving to work in six years total than some people do in a single bad-traffic morning down there.
I even studied a map of the peninsula [Editor’s note: an actual map!] I planned, projected and manifested. Not only did I change the patterns of my sleep, but visions of colorful rowhouses and carriage-drawn horses danced in my head when I did finally rest.
Big industrious city vibes. It’s really not that, but it looks it here.
Going back the following weekend was a non-negotiable. Mentally I was already there.
Sunday morning I was on the road at 6:20AM. I watched the sunrise over the Atlantic as I crossed over into Georgetown and beat the church traffic that I ran into last week by a good hour. I found my usual spot, which I learned recently is getting re-zoned to be a park in the future, which is great for Charleston and horrible for me. Free parking downtown has been my secret weapon for the better half of a decade, and adjusting will hurt (but I will do it.)
Somehow not a single thing in this photo is in focus. Almost gives it a dream like feel (completely unintentional)
I don’t know what it would cost the average American to visit Charleston. If I asked Google it would likely use an Olympic-size swimming pool’s worth of clean water to give me a snappy-sounding but ultimately wrong answer. [Editor’s note: I wont even say the phrase anymore the way Michigan won’t say Ohio State.] So I’ll just spitball. Flights, hotels, transportation, food, parking. It’s thousands of dollars, just for a weekend.
It costs me like $15 a trip.
99% of people there are either paying absolute TOP DOLLAR to live there or are on a dream vacation. I am in an insanely unique and privileged position to enjoy this place for almost no cost at all.
With gas on the rise at $3.50 gallon as we fight an unjustified and idiotic war, and the threat of having to pay for all-day parking on the peninsula (might be cheaper to Uber from Myrtle) I can kind of feel the sands in the hourglass slipping. Not for Charleston visits altogether, but for as easy and cheap as I’ve had them. I can feel the iron cooling off. It added to the pressure of redemption from the weekend prior. I need an iconic bucket, and I need it soon.
“Gotta strike while the iron’s hot, and when it’s not, you bid it good riddance”
These were my first couple visits where I would actually recognize the cast members of Southern Charm if I saw one of them on the street, and for some reason that felt like I was stepping into the show that I had been absolutely shoveling into my face for the last two weeks.
There’s always been the possibility of running into someone famous down there, from locals like Danny McBride and Bill Murray to any number of recognizable faces visiting just because it’s a world-class vacation spot; there’s always a bit of an added thrill. But these people, the Bravo cast, were just people. I could have walked by any one of them on my previous visits and had no idea. Which is fine because they’re just people. But they are on TV, because… well. Why were they on TV?
I couldn’t tell you if anyone of them is particularly talented or skilled at anything at all. One guy owns a sewing store on King, another is part of a team renovates and rents out AirBnB’s around downtown. One is just a giant trust-fund man-baby, although honestly kind of endearing at times.
So Southern Charm, the show title, is, wait for it… sarcastic. Sure, the setting is as charming as anywhere on earth. But these people? They mostly suck. They lie and deceive, covet and cheat, yell and scream. And it’s all for TV of course. Or is it? At almost no point in the show do they feel like relatable human beings. Their lives, houses, decisions, none of it. But I could, at two-hours notice, insert myself in the setting, into the scenery where these other-worldly characters reside. Charleston has always felt surreal, but for some reason this cranked the dial another notch.
There’s a full-time butler in there.
This mansion belongs to Patricia from Southern Charm, it’s featured on the show regularly. She is as old-school Charleston as one can possibly be, the last bastion of a previous generation, one that often gawks in horror of the behavior of the younger cast; but loves them the same. She has a full-time butler who makes her a cocktail at 5pm everyday which she sips on a $45,000 sofa. Probably the only one on the show truly deserving of being on TV.
Most people don’t get to see this view because there’s a 7.5 foot tall art deco cement wall surrounding the property. But my camera is 8 feet tall when I want it to be. So I reached for the sky and played paparazzi for a brief moment.
When I first laid eyes on that B-roll a few weeks back and realized what I watching, I thought, Oh man this is my dream job.
Getting paid to shoot short, visually appealing video clips of my favorite town? How can I get that role!?
But as I watched, I realized that the same crew that shoots B-roll is likely also responsible for shooting the actual show. In that case, I would have told one of the characters to stop being a fucking idiot on the first day and been dismissed immediately. Maybe not a dream after all.
Also, I have to give credit where it’s due: this B-roll is really, really good. In the past I have given the photography scene down there a hard time - there aren’t many photographers there that I look up to - but these guys (or girls) have their finger on the pulse of that town and that job. Kudos.
[Editor’s note: Everyone that works on the show must be good at what they do or I wouldn’t have slipped into their quicksand so easily.]
My first move after I arrived downtown was to head west, something I had never done before. I generally go east, where a majority of the scenery was at - or so I thought at least. During my map recon I noticed an ENORMOUS park that I had not been to: Hampton Park. Oh boy.
I found Hampton Park in FULL BLOOM. It was breathtaking, not only visually, but the SMELL. Oh my goodness the smell of fresh flowers almost carried me away. I couldn’t take pictures fast enough.
A trio making another lap among the spring flowers at Hampton Park.
Most of the photos in this post came from the second trip, so I was having a good day. I got an incredible addition to the dressed-like-their-surroundings series [Editor’s note: I need a catchy name for that one, I’m open to ideas] as well as starting new ones that are promising (one of them shooting windows & their reflections, the other simply titled ‘Framed’).
But I didn’t have a photo that made my heart flutter, one that I could call home about.
Until…
I looked up to the heavens during my stroll through Hampton Park, probably to say thanks again, and saw, for a fleeting moment, a heart in the clouds.
98 miles from my apartment, 8 hours into the day, for one, just one moment. And I got it.
Autofocus grabbed the flowers rather than the cloud 40k feet in the sky but that’s to be expected. I love it.
The full image, only contrast-adjusted. No photoshop or evil-technology-who-shall-not-be-named used to make this image.
Here it is unedited, 3-5 seconds after I took the first shot (focused on the wires this time!) I’m sharing to show how short the opportunity to capture it was.
Look at God work.
From there on out I was playing with house money. I had the shot I wanted, one that made me proud. I could feel the patterns shifting ahead of time. Tonight, I would sleep good.
A reader takes solace under the oaks on The Citadel campus.
And I had no reason not to. I got 13 miles in on foot and stayed until early evening. I was dialed in. He are a few specifically Charleston-quirky scenes that caught my eye throughout the afternoon.
This is what Kristen thinks she looks like when she gets off the plane (she does not lmao)
“Been at it all week, I’m tryin to slide on you”
whippin the FOREIGN foreign
Bikers flyin by, a troll behind garbage can, a slide down the front steps, pizza guy delivering in a Japanese car with the steering wheel on the right side. I had shaken the rust off.
Then, another jewel for my “Dressed like their Surroundings” series. A man in a cream colored Leon Bridges concert tee, waiting to be seated at a restaurant named Leon’s, painted the same cream. Get the fuck out of here.
Couldn’t believe my eyes.
“It can’t be nobody if it’s not me”
I thought to myself: it’s not like riding a bike, street photography. It’s more like playing an instrument, or speaking a language. It’s a muscle, one that weakens if you don’t use it.
The progress from one week to the next was staggering. I was rolling my R’s, getting the sheet music back out, re-strengthening that muscle.
The grains of sands are slipping, the clock is ticking and I am entirely dialed in right now.
I’ll see you again very soon Charleston.